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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28557417">Velvetine Creatures</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliGarnet/pseuds/AliGarnet'>AliGarnet</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work, Velvetine Creatures</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Kissing, Respectfully looking, Underage Smoking</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:48:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,124</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28557417</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliGarnet/pseuds/AliGarnet</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p>    <i></i></p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>    <i>How do you want to make love?<br/>Tenderly or Forcefully?</i></p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>1</p>
  <p>Dina</p>
</div>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dina/Maisy</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Velvetine Creatures</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I could feel Calub kicking me under the table as if he wasn’t meaning to do it, and I sat with my legs crossed and my hands jammed between my thighs, feeling how cold my fingers were through my thin netted tights, the tops of my frayed denim shorts softer than my skin. He kept kicking me softly, rhythmically, and I listened as he spoke almost unaware of it. Both of us unaware like buoys floating in the ocean as their lines became entangled beneath the surface, pulled together with the riptide, gently suffocating in the cascading seafoam.</p><p>
	I nodded almost in time to his kicks, or on the offbeat, wondering if he would notice, ignoring the tingling as the skin on my shin complained, blushing as my face remained emotionless. I never particularly listened to him, he mostly talked long and hard about Classics, or Doctor Who. I just watched his eyebrows move as he spoke. They were thick and dark and reminded me of black and white films where they overemphasized the makeup to exaggerate the actors’ expressions, but Calub’s eyebrows weren’t joined together like George’s from the film club, they were werewolf like and sort of sexy. My fingers fidgeted between my thighs.

</p><p>In the corner of the cafe Maisy was setting up, every now and then she pulled the microphone cord along the floor dramatically, throwing it about like a proper roadie, checking how the lighting reflected off of the rammed bookcases and forcing the stereo speaker mounted on the single booth in the back to issue a series of seizure inducing screeches. Calub kept talking over the din and I had to make up the sentences from where his words had dropped into white noise. 
“Caeser had and then – only forty years after – so it’s pretty clear where he was coming from – an article like that – it made me laugh,”
He paused then curling his lips into a smile and giving me free rein to make my own. 
</p><p>
“Is that too loud?” Maisy said through the microphone and the speaker whined obnoxiously until settling, I gave her a thumbs up and Calub stopped kicking me momentarily, for a moment I thought my heart had stopped beating.
</p><p>
“Shouldn’t there be more people here by now?” Calub said taking a quick glance around. The coffee shop we frequented on half days now that college had started again was almost empty, the walls lined with books and the floor scattered with not-quite-antique furniture. Maisy had adopted the back corner of the shop for her stage, which was little more than an area with a booth stacked with cult classics pushed into the corner to make some room on the second hand rug. A handful of locals talked around a low table by the window that looked out on to the street, streetlights hovering like large glowing bees as rain began to patter against the windows. The only pedestrians visible being customers bound for the curry house across the road.
</p><p>
“The ad said gig starts at 8pm,” Maisy said, pulling off her pink knitted jumper and a short glimpse of her black bra making a cameo before she flung off her top layer and patted down her The Kinks tshirt worn underneath. Calub looked at the shiny watch his dad had given him for his birthday last month,
“It’s already fifteen minutes past,” he muttered.
</p><p>
Maisy sighed pushing her tongue into the empty space behind her bottom lip and watched the rain beginning to fall outside. Her guitar stood propped up on a leather chair, plugged and ready, the red fingerboard contrasting against the shiny black body.
</p><p>
“They’re probably wanting to skip the warm up band,” I interjected, “you know, how people come twenty-minutes late to the cinema ‘cause of adverts,” 
Maisy sighed loudly and slumped into the chair beside her guitar like she often did when things got too frustrating. We had been handing out flyers to all the pubs, charity shops, youth clubs and even stooped low enough to enlist the student council for promotion but with a triangular friendship group it was difficult to debut in a small town where everyone knew your older brother was into hard stuff and had stabbed a guy that one time. 
</p><p>
I tried to give Maisy an encouraging look but Calub had become distracted with his watch and started kicking me again and it was hard to focus.
</p><p>
Maisy played a few songs, mostly background jazz as the room seemed to shudder the moment she started trying to get some atmosphere going. The cafe owner let us stay until ten when the locals departed and when it was clear that no one else was coming he asked us to pay him his fee and go home. Maisy handed over a dogged twenty with a reluctant grimace but I elbowed her before she thought of making a run for it.
</p><p>
“Why don’t we go back to yours and jam for a bit?” The rain was coming down hard, luckily Calub’s puffy coat allowed him to push out the sides like wings and Maisy and I were able to huddle into him like ducklings.
</p><p>
“My mum is having her sister’s family stay over this week,” Maisy said under the roar of the rain, a definitive no.
“My room is a mess,” Calub replied before we could say anything. And by mess he meant that he hadn’t cleared up his war gaming figures or that he had left two books on his bed, or a single sock in the middle of the floor.
</p><p>
I pulled his coat further over my head, but Caleb was just shorter than me and my fringe was getting wet, I could already feel the colour bleeding out of my hair. I could imagine walking through my front door looking like the girl from the grudge flanked by my two weirdo friends.
“I’ll come round yours Dina, if I can stay over,” Maisy said to my unspoken invitation, she was clutching her guitar bag to her as if it would melt under the rain. 
Calub shook his head, flicking water in my face, “Mum doesn’t let me stay at friends,” We knew already and a silent acceptance passed between us.
We walked Calub to the bus stop and waited for his ride. I made a passing remark about his lack of chivalry when he failed to offer us his coat for continued rain protection but he just raised his big eyebrows at me and I had to explain that I was joking.
</p><p>
“We need a sign for him,” Maisy said as we swayed arm in arm down the pavement, splashing each other in puddles, both of our Doc Martins getting thoroughly soaked.
</p><p>
“What – ‘Please approach slowly, animals are frightened by sudden movements’?”
</p><p>
“Nah, just one we can hold up when we make jokes,”
</p><p>
“Oh like a sarcasm sign?”
</p><p>
“Yeah,” she said, making a rectangle with her thumbs and forefingers, “it might help him.”
</p><p>
“I don’t think that would go down well with his parents,”
</p><p>
“I dunno,” she said, a wicked smile growing across her face, “maybe we could make one for his parents too.” 
</p><p>
I laughed, and jumped into a drain, the grey water rising up over the tops of my boots and flooding into my toes with a soothing warmth.
</p><p>
“I just want to get him drunk,” Maisy stepped heavy footed into the puddle behind me and sprayed water up my leg. I pushed her playfully before grabbing her so that she didn’t topple over from the weight of her guitar. “Just once, just to see what he’s like.”
</p><p>
“Can you imagine Calub drunk? He’d be a nightmare,” and probably more suggestible. I let my guard down and images raced into my mind, “I bet he’d wear Spiderman pyjamas to a sleepover.”
</p><p>
“There is nothing uncultured about Spiderman pyjamas,” Maisy corrected me, mock-scolding, 
</p><p>
“What about X-Men pyjamas?”
</p><p>
“Oh, then he’s never going to get with anybody!”
</p><p>
By the time I had brushed my teeth and laid out the futon on my bedroom floor Maisy had already curled up in my bed, her make up streaked down her cheeks, still damp with rain. Everything but her Kinks t-shirt was lumped in a damp pile on the floor. As I approached the bedside lamp I watched her chest rise and fall steadily, her rosy lips parted just slightly as she drifted away in sleep. 
</p><p>
I worried about Maisy when she went out with her brother’s friends, about how easy it would be. She didn’t even notice as I climbed under the covers, feeling her body colder even than my own. When she sensed my warmth she allowed me to hold her, her pale arms like ice, her breath on my face laced with the aroma of smeared cherry lip gloss. I could feel my guts tightening with every breath, the longer the words lingered on my lips the more ingrained they became.
“Maisy, can I kiss you?”
</p><p>
In her half sleep she made a noise and her eyes opened for a fraction, she stretched a little then nodded, her wet hair leaving black lines on my white pillowcase. I breathed slowly, wishing that the admission would release the knot inside me as I let my lips touch hers, the cherry turning acrid as I tasted it, tasted her. Maisy’s breath sent shivers through my arms that held her, as she allowed herself to be held. She never looked at me when we kissed, I studied the freckles on the slow slope of her nose and the eyelashes clumped together under thick eyeliner. She fell asleep as I lay there kissing her with a muted passion that would never survive the night.
</p><p>
By morning the rain had stopped. Maisy laid spread-eagled across my bed, her band t-shirt creased, a big jagged line across the guitarists’ face. I made her some toast with peanut butter and marmite and put in on the floor beside her clothes.
</p><p>
“Maisy, you goin’ to school today?” 
</p><p>
She rolled over in the duvet and pushed her face into the pillow, “No, I have four frees flanked by the cavalry of WWII History either side. It’s a doss at home day.” The rest was muffled speech grumbled into my pillow. I put on a white shirt, with my back to her as she slept in, buttoning up and looking down at my body.
It took me thirty-six minutes to walk to the train station, get on the train, ride to the station nearest my college, walk across the field at the end of the road, under the canopy of tall pines beside the football pitch and the nearby boys boarding school. I grimaced at the puddles on the tarmac, the secondary school boys started school half an hour before us to avoid any wayward young adults fraternising with children, selling them cigarettes or whatever.
</p><p>
“Nadine you’re late,” my History lecturer remarked as I walked into the classroom without making eye contact with anyone. He was a tall man with a crooked smile and an all too friendly demeanor even when he was scolding us. Some of the girls in my class cat called me or made snide comments, the others continued their own conversations, regardless he was not a teacher that commanded respect. 
</p><p>
“More extra credit as punishment?” I asked him, cutting to the chase but he looked a little taken aback and turned to stand before the whiteboard.
</p><p>
“N-no of course not, this isn’t the dark ages. But if you’re going to be late I’d rather you just skip.” There was giggling around the lecture hall but I brushed it off as I took a seat near the back where people couldn’t stare at me. I wanted to like him, but he reminded me of my form tutor who had given me detention on the first week of school in year nine. It had been so awkward for him. He had even tried asking if I had problems at home. Teachers that pretended to be your friends were the worst, it almost felt weirder now they were at least trying to treat me like an adult.
</p><p>
The seat beside me had been empty more often than not lately, Maisy had not officially quit college, but apparently her parents had received a few letters already questioning her lax attendance. There was nothing really to denote it as her desk apart from a little kaleidoscopic heart she had etched into the wood with a compass. I thought about her at home in my bed, the duvet pulled back just enough to show the tops of her thighs.
</p><p>
“Hey Nads,” one of the girls in front of me turned around, her skirt riding up as she mounted the chair backwards, I tried not to look at the colour of her underpants, probably light blue.
</p><p>
“Please don’t call me that.”
</p><p>
“Where’s the slut today, haven’t seen her since she got with that Irish bloke at Leah’s party,” she sort of smiled but the derision outweighed the humour, I could feel that she was sharing the amusement at my expense with the others behind me. I hunched my shoulders like a stone wall between me and them.
</p><p>
“I don’t know,” I didn’t lie very often, but people usually believed me when I did. I didn’t like to engage with them especially when they talked trash about Maisy, even if it were true. 
</p><p>
I was the first to stand when the bell rang. Siobhan met me in the corridor, she was wearing her old, ratty sixth form school jumper with her shirt collar folded neatly on top and a beanie on her head.
</p><p>
“You didn’t come last night, bitch,” I punched her shoulder as she slumped against the brick wall and let her eyes gloss over dramatically. 
</p><p>
“Sorry, had church crap to do,” she shrugged hoisting her shoulder bag higher as we walked to the science labs together, “I didn’t even have time to do my roots.” 
</p><p>
“You should just embrace your gingerness, think of all those women that would’ve killed to be painted by the pre-Raphaelites and you’re denying the truth of your genes,. Free the red beast!”
</p><p>
Siobhan laughed, pushing a curtain of blonde hair behind her ear. She spent an hour before school straightening her hair because it was so thick and the result was worth every nanosecond.
</p><p>
“Did your weird mate come along,” she asked, “you know, last night. The one with the demonic sounding name.”
</p><p>
“Who Caleb?”
</p><p>
 “That’s the one. He gives me the creeps,”
</p><p>
“He doesn’t make eye contact with anyone, it’s not just you,” I assured her.
</p><p>
She laughed pushing open the doors to the natural sciences wing as the  daylight was extinguished by electronic lighting, walls clustered with articles of student work bombarded us, making me feel small compared to works with comments such as star student and double distinction.
</p><p>
Sitting next to Siobhan made me feel smart, she was terrible at physics but great at biology and chemistry, so we made a great team. Being good at maths had never paid off for me so I generally kept it under wraps. Even if it meant nothing for me, at least my tutoring could allow Siobhan to balance her knowledge in the sciences, in return she memorised my periodic table for me.
</p><p>
“Are you going to the bookshop after school?” I wrote on a bit of paper that I passed across the counter to her as the lecturer had insisted we revise in silence because of her migraine.
</p><p>
“This is the year where you decide the subjects you will study for the next three or four years of your academic life,” our science teacher had explained over and over again. I hadn’t decided yet what I wanted to study at university, but I would have to take science as a compulsory subject anyway to get on any kind of science degree course so what did he care.
</p><p>
Siobhan scribbled something quickly on the paper and passed it back to me, returning her attention to the page in her textbook.
</p><p>
<i>Got music club,</i> the paper whispered back in tiny light pencil scrawl.
</p><p>
Caleb didn’t have a phone so I couldn’t text him during lunch but I sent Maisy a message to see if she was still at my house.
In town, she wrote back quickly and before I could type a reply my phone buzzed loudly in my hands and flashed up another message from her. 
</p><p>
<i>Ditch and come hang?</i>
</p><p>
I had Rugby practice after lunch but there was double History again at the end of the day just as Maisy had foretold, and we were doing a group project. If I missed a lesson the others in my group might leave me behind. My phone vibrated again and I opened another text from Maisy,
</p><p>
<i>There are cute boys here.</i>
</p><p>
I told one of the girls on the Rugby team to tell the coach that I had cramps and had been advised by the nurse to go home and I collected my coat from my locker before making off into the field at a brisk pace.
</p><p>
I pulled my baseball cap down over my eyes and tried to hide my skirt behind my bag as I got on the bus, paying 70p for a child’s ticket and the bus driver eyed my long gaunt limbs suspiciously but regardless, let me on.
</p><p>
I was surprised to find the town centre so quiet, even the traffic was gentle down towards the beach. The sea just visible over the tops of buildings as the bus turned right, avoiding the clifftop to dive down into the middle of the shops. The pedestrian precinct rose up like a long tongue diverting in different directions underneath the bus shelters and up hills on either side. I called Maisy as soon as I got off the bus. Voicemail.
</p><p>
I called her again and just as her voicemail cut in again she picked up,
</p><p>
“We’re in Costa,” she said before even saying hello,
</p><p>
“I’ve still got my school bag. Who’s we?”
</p><p>
“So what, come anyway.”
</p><p>
I thought for a moment, feeling naked in my skirt and long socks. I hadn’t dressed for being seen by actual people. I considered buying some jeans, but I probably didn’t have enough money on me.
</p><p>
“Ah actually, meet us at the park,” Maisy interrupted my thoughts.
</p><p>
“You’re heading there now?”
</p><p>
A pause, “yeah, by the Lions.”
</p><p>
“Ok, see you in a minute,”
</p><p>
Another pause, “yeah ok see you there.” A click.
</p><p>
I slipped the phone back into my bag and walked to the park, feeling the mist growing thicker as I walked through it, like a miasma luring me into dark places.</p>
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